In her first interview since announcing a Senate run, Chelsea Manning discusses the long road to freedom, and why she’s determined to seize her moment

A few weeks after Chelsea Manning was released from military prison, having served seven years of a 35-year sentence for leaking official secrets, she came to a terrible realization. “I was out, but I saw that while I had been away, the prison had moved out here as well. That’s how I feel. I feel like I haven’t left, we’ve just exchanged prisons.”

That grim assessment, that even in freedom she was trapped within a prison, dawned on her as she walking one day through the streets of Brooklyn. The New York borough has a reputation for hipster cool, but she was shocked to see so many heavily armed police.

Federal election documents confirm Manning’s intention to run in November

Manning jailed in 2010 for passing files to WikiLeaks and was freed last year

Chelsea Manning, the former US army private who was imprisoned for passing information to WikiLeaks, has confirmed she will run for a US Senate seat.

A federal election filing, made on Thursday, showed Manning’s intention to run in the November elections as a Democrat. On Sunday, the former intelligence analyst tweeted: “Yup, we’re running for Senate #WeGotThis.”